Radio host Hugh
Hewitt: "And so everyone that you work with, or 95 percent of
people you work with, are old liberals."ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin: "I don’t know if
it’s 95 percent, and unfortunately, they’re not all old. There are a
lot of young liberals here, too. But it certainly, there are enough
in the old media, not just in ABC, but in old media generally, that
it tilts the coverage quite frequently, in many issues, in a liberal
direction, which is completely improper....It’s an endemic problem.
And again, it’s the reason why for 40 years, conservatives have
rightly felt that we did not give them a fair shake."— Exchange on The Hugh Hewitt Show, October 30, 2006.

"If I were a conservative, I understand why I would feel
suspicious that I was not going to get a fair break....The mindset
at ABC, where you and I used to be colleagues at, at the other big
news organizations, it’s just too focused on being more favorable to
Nancy Pelosi, say, than Newt Gingrich; being more down on the
Republicans’ chances than perhaps is warranted; singling out —
you’re seeing here a 60 Minutes piece about Nancy Pelosi. I
don’t remember Newt Gingrich getting a piece that favorable in
1994."— ABC Political Director Mark Halperin, co-author of The Way
to Win, on FNC’s The O’Reilly Factor, October 24, 2006.

Former MSNBC President Erik Sorenson: "The difference-maker
was the attitude of the channel that was not just a marketing
slogan, but actually got lived within the programs virtually every
minute of the day. Cue the slogan."Fox News Channel announcer: "Fair and balanced."Sorenson: "There was a full-on commitment to that premise,
and there were far more people in America who seemed to hold that
opinion of the liberal media bias than anyone in New York City, the
media capital of the world, had estimated."— Excerpt from an October 8, 2006 Fox News Channel special,
Fox News at 10: Thank You, America.

Former Washington Post reporter Thomas Edsall: "I agree that
the — whatever you want to call it, mainstream media — presents
itself as unbiased when, in fact, there are built into it many
biases and they are overwhelmingly to the left."Host Hugh Hewitt: "Well, that’s very candid....Given that
number of reporters out there, is it ten to one Democrat to
Republican? Twenty to one Democrat to Republican?"Edsall: "It’s probably in the range of 15 to 25:1
Democrat....There is a real difficulty on the part of the mainstream
media being sympathetic, or empathetic, whatever the word would be,
to the kind of thinking that goes into conservative approaches to
issues. I think the religious right has been treated as sort of an
alien world."— Exchange on Hugh Hewitt’s syndicated radio show September 21,
2006 audio later posted at TownHall.com.

“The elephant in the
newsroom is our narrowness. Too often, we wear liberalism on our
sleeve and are intolerant of other lifestyles and opinions....We’re
not very subtle about it at this paper: If you work here, you must
be one of us. You must be liberal, progressive, a Democrat. I’ve
been in communal gatherings in The Post, watching election
returns, and have been flabbergasted to see my colleagues cheer
unabashedly for the Democrats.”— Washington Post “Book World” editor Marie Arana in a
contribution to the Post’s “daily in-house electronic critiques,” as
quoted by Post media reporter Howard Kurtz in an October 3, 2005
article.

Newsweek’s Evan Thomas: “Is this attack [on public
broadcasting’s budget] going to make NPR a little less liberal?”NPR legal correspondent Nina Totenberg: “I don’t think we’re
liberal to begin with and I think if you would listen, Evan, you
would know that.”Thomas: “I do listen to you and you’re not that liberal, but
you’re a little bit liberal.”Totenberg: “No, I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s a fair
criticism, I really don’t — any more than, any more than you would
say that Newsweek is liberal.”Thomas: “I think Newsweek is a little liberal.”— Exchange on the June 26, 2005 Inside Washington.

“There is, Hugh, I
agree with you, a deep anti-military bias in the media. One that
begins from the premise that the military must be lying, and that
American projection of power around the world must be wrong. I think
that that is a hangover from Vietnam, and I think it’s very
dangerous. That’s different from the media doing it’s job of
challenging the exercise of power without fear or favor.”— ABC News White House correspondent Terry Moran talking with Los
Angeles-based national radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, May 17,
2005.

“I believe it is true that a significant chunk of the press believes
that Democrats are incompetent but good-hearted, and Republicans are
very efficient but evil.”— Wall Street Journal political editor John Harwood on the April
23, 2005 Inside Washington.

“I worked for the New York Times for 25 years. I could probably
count on one hand, in the Washington bureau of the New York Times,
people who would describe themselves as people of faith....I think
one of the real built-in biases in the media is towards
secularism....You want diversity in the newsroom, not because of
some quota, but because you have to have diversity to cover the
story well and cover all aspects of a society. And you don’t have
religious people making the decisions about where coverage is
focused. And I think that’s one of the faults.”— Former New York Times reporter Steve Roberts, now a journalism
professor at George Washington University, on CNN’s Reliable
Sources, March 27, 2005.

“Personally, I have a great affection for CBS News....But I stopped
watching it some time ago. The unremitting liberal orientation
finally became too much for me. I still check in, but less and less
frequently. I increasingly drift to NBC News and Fox and MSNBC.”— Former CBS News President Van Gordon Sauter in an op-ed
published January 13, 2005 in the Los Angeles Times.

Joe Scarborough: “Is
there a liberal bias in the media or is the bias towards getting the
story first and getting the highest ratings, therefore, making the
most money?”
Former ABC 20/20 anchor Hugh Downs: “Well, I think the latter, by
far. And, of course, when the word ‘liberal’ came to be a pejorative
word, you began to wonder, you have to say that the press doesn’t
want to be thought of as merely liberal. But people tend to be more
liberated in their thought when they are closer to events and know a
little more about what the background of what’s happening. So, I
suppose, in that respect, there is a liberal, if you want to call it
a bias. The press is a little more in touch with what’s happening.”— MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, January 10, 2005.

“Does anybody really think there wouldn’t have been more scrutiny if
this [CBS’s bogus 60 Minutes National Guard story] had been about
John Kerry?”— Former 60 Minutes Executive Producer Don Hewitt at a January
10, 2005 meeting at CBS News, as quoted later that day by Chris
Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball.

“The notion of a neutral, non-partisan mainstream press was, to me
at least, worth holding onto. Now it’s pretty much dead, at least as
the public sees things. The seeds of its demise were sown with the
best of intentions in the late 1960s, when the AMMP [American
Mainstream Media Party] was founded in good measure (and ironically
enough) by CBS. Old folks may remember the moment: Walter Cronkite
stepped from behind the podium of presumed objectivity to become an
outright foe of the war in Vietnam. Later, he and CBS’s star White
House reporter, Dan Rather, went to painstaking lengths to make
Watergate understandable to viewers, which helped seal Richard
Nixon’s fate as the first President to resign. The crusades of
Vietnam and Watergate seemed like a good idea at the time, even a
noble one, not only to the press but perhaps to a majority of
Americans. The problem was that, once the AMMP declared its
existence by taking sides, there was no going back. A party was
born.”— Newsweek’s chief political reporter, Howard Fineman, “The
‘Media Party’ is over: CBS’ downfall is just the tip of the
iceberg,” January 11 , 2005.

“Most members of the establishment media live in Washington and New
York. Most of them don’t drive pickup trucks, most of them don’t
have guns, most of them don’t go to NASCAR, and every day we’re not
out in areas that care about those things and deal with those things
as part of their daily lives, we are out of touch with a lot of
America and with a lot of America that supports George W. Bush.”— ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin during live
television coverage immediately before John Kerry’s concession
speech on November 3, 2004.

“I know a lot of you believe that most people in the news business
are liberal. Let me tell you, I know a lot of them, and they were
almost evenly divided this time. Half of them liked Senator Kerry;
the other half hated President Bush.”— CBS’s Andy Rooney on the November 7, 2004 60 Minutes.

“There’s one other base here: the media. Let’s talk a little media
bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win. And I think
they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards — I’m talking about the
establishment media, not Fox, but — they’re going to portray Kerry
and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and all,
there’s going to be this glow about them that some, is going to be
worth, collectively, the two of them, that’s going to be worth maybe
15 points.”— Newsweek’s Evan Thomas on Inside Washington, July 10, 2004.

The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz: “You’ve said on the
program Inside Washington that because of the portrayal of Kerry and
Edwards as ‘young and dynamic and optimistic,’ that that’s worth
maybe 15 points.”Newsweek’s Evan Thomas: “Stupid thing to say. It was
completely wrong. But I do think that, I do think that the
mainstream press, I’m not talking about the blogs and Rush and all
that, but the mainstream press favors Kerry. I don’t think it’s
worth 15 points. That was just a stupid thing to say.”Kurtz: “Is it worth five points?”Thomas: “Maybe, maybe.”— Exchange on CNN’s Reliable Sources, October 17, 2004.

Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham: “The work of the evening,
obviously, is to connect George W. Bush to the great war leaders of
the modern era. You’re going to hear about Churchill projecting
power against public opinion....”MSNBC’s Chris Matthews: “But Iraq was a popular cause when he
first started it. It wasn’t like Churchill speaking against the
Nazis.”Meacham: “That’s not the way the Republican Party sees it.
They think that all of us and the New York Times are against them.”Matthews: “Well, they’re right about the New York Times, and
they may be right about all of us.”— Exchange shortly after 8:30pm EDT during MSNBC’s live
convention coverage, August 30, 2004.

“Of course it is....These are the social issues: gay rights, gun
control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others. And if
you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of them, you’ve
been reading the paper with your eyes closed.”— New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent in a July 25, 2004
column which appeared under a headline asking, “Is The New York
Times a Liberal Newspaper?”

“Like every other institution, the Washington and political press
corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections. They
include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that
liberal political positions on social issues like gun control,
homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more
conservative positions are ‘conservative positions.’...”
“The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush’s
justifications for the Iraq war....It does not accept the
proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy....It remains
fixated on the unemployment rate....The worldview of the dominant
media can be seen in every frame of video and every print word
choice that is currently being produced about the presidential
race.”— From the February 10, 2004 edition of ABCNews.com’s “The Note,”
a daily political memo assembled by ABC News political director Mark
Halperin and his staff.

Jack Cafferty: “Can you say liberal? And the liberal talk
radio station Air America debuts today....The question is, does
America need additional ‘liberal’ media outlets?...”Bill Hemmer: “I think it’s a good question....Why hasn’t a
liberal radio station or TV network never taken off before?”Cafferty: “We have them. Are you, did you just get off a
vegetable truck from the South Bronx? They’re everywhere....What do
they call this joint? The Clinton News Network?”— Exchange on CNN’s American Morning, March 31, 2004.

“I think most claims of liberal media bias are overblown. At the
same time, I do think that reporters often let their cultural
predilections drive their coverage of social issues, and the
coverage of the gay marriage amendment offers a perfect
example....Why do reporters assume that the amendment is a fringe
concern? Perhaps because nearly all live in big cities, among
educated, relatively affluent peers, who hold liberal views on
social matters. In Washington and New York, gay marriage is an
utterly mainstream proposition. Unfortunately, in most of the
country, it’s not.”— New Republic Senior Editor Jonathan Chait, CBSNews.com, March
1, 2004.

“Where I work at ABC, people say ‘conservative’ the way people say
‘child molester.’”— ABC 20/20 co-anchor John Stossel to CNSNews.com reporter Robert
Bluey, in a story posted January 28, 2004.

“I think they [most reporters] are on the humane side, and that
would appear to many to be on the liberal side. A lot of newspaper
people — and to a lesser degree today, the TV people — come up
through the ranks, through the police-reporting side, and they see
the problems of their fellow man, beginning with their low salaries
— which newspaper people used to have anyway — and right on through
their domestic quarrels, their living conditions. The meaner side of
life is made visible to most young reporters. I think it affects
their sentimental feeling toward their fellow man and that is
interpreted by some less-sensitive people as being liberal.”— Former CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite to Time
magazine’s Richard Zoglin in an interview published in the
magazine’s November 3, 2003 edition.

“I thought he [former CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg] made
some very good points. There is just no question that I, among
others, have a liberal bias. I mean, I’m consistently liberal in my
opinions. And I think some of the, I think Dan [Rather] is
transparently liberal. Now, he may not like to hear me say that. I
always agree with him, too, but I think he should be more careful.”— CBS’s 60 Minutes commentator Andy Rooney on Goldberg’s book,
Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News, on CNN’s
Larry King Live, June 5, 2002.

“Most of the time I really think responsible journalists, of which I
hope I’m counted as one, leave our bias at the side of the table.
Now it is true, historically in the media, it has been more of a
liberal persuasion for many years. It has taken us a long time, too
long in my view, to have vigorous conservative voices heard as
widely in the media as they now are. And so I think yes, on
occasion, there is a liberal instinct in the media which we need to
keep our eye on, if you will.”— ABC anchor Peter Jennings appearing on CNN’s Larry King Live,
April 10, 2002

“[Journalists] have a certain worldview based on being in
Manhattan...that isn’t per se liberal, but if you look at people
there, they lean’ in that direction.” — Columbia Journalism Review publisher David Laventhol, as
reported in “Leaning on the Media” by Mark Jurkowitz, The Boston
Globe, January 17, 2002.

“There is a liberal bias. It’s demonstrable. You look at some
statistics. About 85 percent of the reporters who cover the White
House vote Democratic, they have for a long time. There is a,
particularly at the networks, at the lower levels, among the editors
and the so-called infrastructure, there is a liberal bias. There is
a liberal bias at Newsweek, the magazine I work for — most of the
people who work at Newsweek live on the upper West Side in New York
and they have a liberal bias....[ABC White House reporter] Brit
Hume’s bosses are liberal and they’re always quietly denouncing him
as being a right-wing nut.” — Newsweek Washington Bureau Chief Evan Thomas on Inside
Washington, May 12, 1996.

“Everybody knows that there’s a liberal, that there’s a heavy
liberal persuasion among correspondents.....Anybody who has to live
with the people, who covers police stations, covers county courts,
brought up that way, has to have a degree of humanity that people
who do not have that exposure don’t have, and some people interpret
that to be liberal. It’s not a liberal, it’s humanitarian and that’s
a vastly different thing.” — Former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite at the March 21, 1996 Radio &
TV Correspondents Dinner.

“There are lots of reasons fewer people are watching network news,
and one of them, I’m more convinced than ever, is that our viewers
simply don’t trust us. And for good reason. The old argument that
the networks and other `media elites’ have a liberal bias is so
blatantly true that it’s hardly worth discussing anymore. No, we
don’t sit around in dark corners and plan strategies on how we’re
going to slant the news. We don’t have to. It comes naturally to
most reporters.....Mr. Engberg’s report set new standards for
bias....Can you imagine, in your wildest dreams, a network news
reporter calling Hillary Clinton’s health care plan ‘wacky?’...
“‘Reality Check’ suggests the viewers are going to get the facts.
And then they can make up their mind. As Mr. Engberg might put it:
‘Time Out!’ You’d have a better chance of getting the facts
someplace else — like Albania.” — CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg on an anti-flat tax story by CBS
reporter Eric Engberg, February 13, 1996 Wall Street Journal op-ed.

“I think this is another reflection of the overwhelming journalistic
tilt towards liberalism and those programs. Now, the question is
whether that’s bad or not, and that’s another debate. But the idea
that many of us, and my colleagues deny that there is this kind of
bias is nuts, because there is in our world — I forget what the
surveys show, but most of us are Democratic and probably most of us
line up in the fairly liberal world.” — Time Washington contributing editor Hugh Sidey responding to a
caller who asked if journalists are in favor of affirmative action,
July 21, 1995 C-SPAN Washington Journal.

“As much as we try to think otherwise, when you’re covering someone
like yourself, and your position in life is insecure, she’s your
mascot. Something in you roots for her. You’re rooting for your
team. I try to get that bias out, but for many of us it’s there.”
— Time Senior Writer Margaret Carlson quoted in The Washington
Post, March 7, 1994.

“I think liberalism lives — the notion that we don’t have to stay
where we are as a society, we have promises to keep, and it is
liberalism, whether people like it or not, which has animated all
the years of my life. What on Earth did conservatism ever accomplish
for our country? It was people who wanted to change things for the
better.” — Charles Kuralt talking with Morley Safer on the CBS special,
One for the Road with Charles Kuralt, May 5, 1994.

“I won’t make any
pretense that the ‘American Agenda’ [segments on World News Tonight]
is totally neutral. We do take a position. And I think the public
wants us now to take a position. If you give both sides and ‘Well,
on the one hand this and on the other that’ — I think people kind of
really want you to help direct their thinking on some issues.” — ABC News reporter Carole Simpson on CNBC’s Equal Time, August
9, 1994.

“I think we are aware, as everybody who works in the media is, that
the old stereotype of the liberal bent happens to be true, and we’re
making a concerted effort to really look for more from the other,
without being ponderous or lecturing or trying to convert people to
another way of thinking.”— ABC World News Tonight Executive Producer Emily Rooney,
September 27, 1993 Electronic Media.

“The group of people I’ll call The Press — by which I mean several
dozen political journalists of my acquaintance, many of whom the
Buchanan administration may someday round up on suspicion of having
Democratic or even liberal sympathies — was of one mind as the
season’s first primary campaign shuddered toward its finish. I asked
each of them, one after another, this question: If you were a New
Hampshire Democrat, whom would you vote for? The answer was always
the same; and the answer was always Clinton. In this group, in my
experience, such unanimity is unprecedented....
“Almost none is due to calculations about Clinton being ‘electable’...and
none at all is due to belief in Clinton’s denials in the Flowers
business, because no one believes these denials. No, the real reason
members of The Press like Clinton is simple, and surprisingly
uncynical: they think he would make a very good, perhaps a great,
President. Several told me they were convinced that Clinton is the
most talented presidential candidate they have ever encountered, JFK
included.” — New Republic Senior Editor Hendrik Hertzberg, March 9, 1992
issue.

“We’re unpopular because the press tends to be liberal, and I don’t
think we can run away from that. And I think we’re unpopular with a
lot of conservatives and Republicans this time because the White
House press corps by and large detested George Bush, probably for
good and sufficient reason, they certainly can cite chapter and
verse. But their real contempt for him showed through in their
reporting in a way that I think got up the nose of the American
people.” — Time writer William A. Henry III on the PBS November 4, 1992
election-night special The Finish Line.

“Coverage of the campaign vindicated exactly what conservatives have
been saying for years about liberal bias in the media. In their
defense, journalists say that though they may have their personal
opinions, as professionals they are able to correct for them when
they write. Sounds nice, but I’m not buying any.” — Former Newsweek reporter Jacob Weisberg in The New Republic,
November 23, 1992 issue.

“There is no such thing as objective reporting...I’ve become even
more crafty about finding the voices to say the things I think are
true. That’s my subversive mission.” — Boston Globe environmental reporter Dianne Dumanoski at an Utne
Reader symposium May 17-20, 1990. Quoted by Micah Morrison in the
July 1990 American Spectator.

“I do have an axe to grind...I want to be the little subversive
person in television.”— Barbara Pyle, CNN Environmental Editor and Turner Broadcasting
Vice President for Environmental Policy, as quoted by David Brooks
in the July 1990 American Spectator.

“I’m not sure it’s useful to include every single point of view
simply in order to cover every base because you can come up with a
program that’s virtually impossible for the audience to sort out.”
— PBS Senior Producer Linda Harrar commenting on PBS’s ten-part
series, Race to Save The Planet, to MRC and reported in the December
1990 MediaWatch.

“As the science editor at Time I would freely admit that on this
issue we have crossed the boundary from news reporting to advocacy.”
— Time Science Editor Charles Alexander at a September 16, 1989
global warming conference at the Smithsonian Institution as quoted
by David Brooks in an October 5, 1989 Wall Street Journal column.

“Clearly the networks
have made that decision now, where you’d have to call it [global
warming stories] advocacy.” — NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Andrea Mitchell at a
September 16, 1989 global warming conference at the Smithsonian
Institution as quoted by David Brooks in an October 5, 1989 Wall
Street Journal column.

"I know that I’ve
tried my best through my career to ask challenging questions to
whomever I’m speaking, and whether it’s a Republican or a Democrat,
I try to raise important issues depending on their particular
position.... Oftentimes people put their, they see you from their
own individual prisms. And if you’re not reflecting their point of
view, or you’re asking an antagonistic question of someone they
might agree with in terms of policy, they see you as the enemy, and
I think that’s just a mistake....You have Fox, which espouses a
particular point of view." — Incoming CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric at the
Aspen Ideas Festival on July 5, broadcast by C-SPAN on September 2,
2006.

"[I am] biased — I have a very strong bias toward independent
journalism.... Some of what you describe as ‘baggage’ comes from
people who have the following view: Their view is, ‘You report the
news the way I want it reported or I’m going to make you pay a price
and hang a sign around your neck saying you’re a bomb-toting
Bolshevik.’"— Ex-CBS anchorman Dan Rather, as quoted by the Washington
Post’s Lisa de Moraes in a July 12, 2006 column.

"Well, they call you names when you insist on being
independent....It’s important for the American people to understand
that a journalist or journalistic enterprise that’s willing to be
truly independent, and fiercely independent when called upon, and
dedicated to pulling no punches and playing no favorites have become
in recent years a bit of an endangered species....Certainly, I
didn’t do it perfectly. A lot of people think I did it lousily.
Maybe I did. And I’ve got my scars and got my wounds. And yes,
people always want to put a sign around you and call you something
bad if you refuse to report the news the way they want it reported."— Dan Rather on CNN’s Larry King Live, July 12, 2006.

FNC’s Bill
O’Reilly: “Now the right wing thinks you’re a raving liberal,
you and Rather contrived to put Bush in the worst possible
light....So are you a liberal?”Fired CBS producer Mary Mapes: “Well, I’m not sure what a
liberal is. I’m more liberal than some people. I can tell you my
eight-year-old son thinks he’s being raised by the most conservative
parents in the world....”O’Reilly: “Are you registered Democrat?”Mapes: “You know, I don’t know....I don’t know if I’m
independent or Democrat. I know I’m not — in Texas, I’m not sure how
I’m registered.”O’Reilly: “So you would describe yourself politically as?”Mapes: “Oh, my goodness. I’m liberal on some things, I’m
conservative on some things.”— FNC’s The O’Reilly Factor, November 10, 2005.

“It’s very difficult for any reporter or producer to completely and
totally shut out his political opinions, but what I’ve seen at CBS
News, people do a darned good job at doing that. I guess if I saw
that creeping into our coverage I would have to address it, but I
don’t see that in our coverage. I think we have been falsely accused
of that at times.”— New CBS News President Sean McManus at a meeting with CBS
employees, as reported by Vaughn Ververs on the “Public Eye” blog on
CBSNews.com, November 8, 2005.

Chris Wallace: “I get e-mails from time to time saying to me,
‘You’re just like your father,’ and they don’t mean it as a
compliment.”CBS’s Mike Wallace: “What does that mean?”Chris Wallace: “They say, ‘Go to CBS. Go to one of the big
networks. Go to the mainstream media’ — as if that were a foreign
land. Do you understand why some people feel such disaffection for
the mainstream media?”Mike Wallace: “Oh, yeah. They think we’re wild-eyed commies.
Liberals. Yes?”Chris Wallace: “That’s what they think. How do you plead?”Mike Wallace: “I think it’s damn foolishness.”— Exchange on Fox News Sunday, November 6, 2005.

“As was the practice in all he did, Dan was meticulously careful to
be fair and balanced and accurate. When did we stop believing that
this is indeed how we all perform our jobs or try to? When did we
allow those with questionable agendas to take the lead and convince
people of something quite the opposite? It’s shameful. But I
digress.”— MSNBC President and former ABC and CNN news executive Rick
Kaplan praising ex-CBS anchor Dan Rather on September 19 as the
latter received a lifetime achievement award from the National
Television Academy, a ceremony televised on C-SPAN on October 1,
2005.

“A lot of my personal worldview is unmistakably sympathetic to
things in a liberal playbook, but honest to God, I have been called
a reactionary by some on the far left, a liberal by some on the far
right and I’m insulted by both terms. My point of view is about
delivering information and context. It has nothing to do with a
political point of view.”— MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, as quoted in a June 9, 2005
Houston Chronicle profile by Mike McDaniel.

“One way a reporter in
this country should be judged is how well he or she stands up to the
pressure to intimidate. I remember the first time someone accused me
of being an ‘N-lover.’ There was a lot of that during the ‘60s when
I covered the civil rights movement. Then you move forward from
civil rights into the Vietnam War....’We’re going to hang a sign
around you which calls you some bad name: anti-military,
anti-American, anti-war.’ Then, when Watergate came into
being....was the first time I began to hear this word ‘liberal’ as
an epithet thrown my way....People who have very strong biases of
their own, they come at you with a story: ‘If you won’t report it
the way I want it reported, then you’re biased.’ Now, it is true
about me, for better or for worse, if you want to see my neck swell,
you just try to tell me where to line up or what to think and mostly
what to report.”— Dan Rather near the end of his one-hour CBS News special, Dan
Rather: A Reporter Remembers, which aired on his last night as
CBS
Evening News anchor, March 9, 2005.

“He [Dan Rather] should be remembered as the complete reporter, a
person who should be remembered for the hundreds and thousands of
broadcasts he did....If we wish to be fair-minded rather than
mean-spirited, we should not be fixated on the one story that went
bad.”— Former CBS News reporter Marvin Kalb, now at Harvard’s
Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, as
quoted in the March 8, 2005 Boston Globe.

Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes: “Look, at the end of the
day, if we’re worried about too many conservatives in the White
House press briefing room, this is a discussion that’s not, that’s
not gonna resonate with the American public.”Host Chris Matthews: “You think it’s mostly packed with
liberals? Are you saying most of those people who are paid to be
journalists in that room are lib-labs, they’re liberals?”Hayes: “Yes, of course....Is there a debate about that?”
Matthews: “Well, there’s Helen Thomas, who I would call liberal. But
who else is in there? Seriously. There are a lot of straight
reporters in that room.”Time’s Margaret Carlson: “I think they’re mostly straight
reporters. And I don’t think you can keep your job
otherwise....Elisabeth Bumiller reports for the New York Times,
which has a liberal editorial page, but she plays it straight down
the middle.”— Exchange on MSNBC’s Hardball, February 25, 2005.

Ex-CBS reporter Phil Jones: “I’ve known Dan Rather for almost 40
years. The Dan Rather I know, believe me, had the President of the
United States been a Democrat, he would still have pushed to go
forward with that story. And for all these people out there who want
to attack Dan as being this partisan Democrat...this is not an
exhibit.”
PBS’s Terence Smith, who worked at CBS News from 1985 to 1998: “I
second that.”— CNN’s Reliable Sources, January 16, 2005.

“I don’t think I’m easily characterized. I grew up in red-state
America, but I live in blue-state America and I like to think that I
reflect the sensibilities of both those places.”— NBC’s Tom Brokaw on MSNBC’s Imus in the Morning on December 1,
2004 his last day as Nightly News anchor.

“I’m not political. I don’t vote....I have no more interest in the
political outcome of an election than I did in the winner or loser
of any ballgame I ever covered.”— MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, formerly with ESPN, in an Online
Journalism Review interview posted November 30, 2004.

“[Media Research Center President] Brent Bozell has, you know, an
entire organization devoted to doing as much damage, and I choose
that word carefully, as he can to the credibility of the news
divisions. And now, on the Left, there are the young bloggers out
there ....These three aging white men are stuck somewhere in the
middle trying, on a nightly basis, to give a fair and balanced
picture of what’s going on in the world.”– NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, sitting alongside Dan Rather and
Peter Jennings, at an October 2, 2004 New Yorker Festival forum
shown on C-SPAN the next day.

“Anybody who knows me knows that I am not politically motivated, not
politically active for Democrats or Republicans, and that I’m
independent. People who are so passionately partisan politically or
ideologically committed basically say, ‘Because he won’t report it
our way, we’re going to hang something bad around his neck and choke
him with it, check him out of existence if we can, if not make him
feel great pain.’ They know that I’m fiercely independent and that’s
what drives them up a wall.” — CBS’s Dan Rather as quoted by USA Today’s Peter Johnson and Jim Drinkard in a September 16, 2004 article.

“Powerful and extremely well-financed forces are concentrating on
questions about the documents because they can’t deny the
fundamental truth of the [60 Minutes National Guard] story. If you
can’t deny the information, then attack and seek to destroy the
credibility of the messenger, the bearer of the information. And in
this case, it’s change the subject from the truth of the information
to the truth of the documents. This is your basic fogging machine,
which is set up to cloud the issue, to obscure the truth....Over the
long haul, this will be consistent with our history and our
traditions and reputation. We took heat during the McCarthy time,
during Vietnam, during civil rights, during Watergate. We haven’t
always been right, but our record is damn good.”— CBS’s Dan Rather as quoted by the New York Observer’s Joe
Hagan, September 15, 2004

“CNN, I think, is viewed as liberal because, I think, this is my own
personal perspective, I think journalists are generally viewed as
being liberal....[Since] we don’t give a slant, we don’t give a
corporate slant to the journalism, that bias towards both discovery
and revealing the truth that is inherent in journalism comes through
in CNN, and they get characterized as being a liberal network.”— Time Warner Chairman and CEO Richard Parsons, whose company
owns CNN, speaking at the UNITY: Journalists of Color conference in
Washington, DC on August 6, 2004 and shown live on C-SPAN.

“Another disturbing development, for which I was unprepared, was
that a small enclave of neoconservative editors was making
accusations of ‘political correctness’ in order to block stories or
slant them against minorities and traditional social welfare
programs.”— Former Executive Editor Howell Raines in “My Times,” a
21,000-word article about the obstacles he faced while running the
New York Times, published in the May 2004 edition of The Atlantic.

“Personal feelings about this war have run very high among readers,
even before it started, and the view that things are better than the
press makes them out to be has been expressed by the Bush
administration and supporters of the war for more than a year. There
are, undoubtedly, some positive developments that may not have been
reported. But it seems to me that events on the ground have
confirmed the thrust and credibility of the reporting on this
conflict and that the press generally has been more reliable than
official statements as a guide to what is happening. My view is that
both this country and Iraq are at a critical juncture in a huge,
costly and controversial undertaking and that readers who view the
work of reporters covering this for major U.S. news organizations as
“lefty spin” are fooling themselves.”— Washington Post Ombudsman Michael Getler in his Sunday column,
May 23, 2004.

American University journalism professor Jane Hall: “The Media
Research Center, the conservative media watchdog group, has been
getting a lot of attention for its reports alleging liberal bias in
the media....What is the impact, do you think, of a steady drumbeat
of such criticism? Does it not have an impact on the network?”
Tom Brokaw: “It is a little wearying, but you’ve got to rise above
it and take it case by case. Most of the cases are pretty flimsily
made....What I get tired of is Brent Bozell [president of the MRC]
trying to make these fine legal points everywhere every day. A lot
of it just doesn’t hold up. So much of it is that bias — like beauty
— is in the eye of the beholder.”— From an interview with Brokaw in the January/February 2004
issue of the Columbia Journalism Review.

“What troubles me is a disturbing trend of using the popular appeal
of those [conservative] beliefs in some quarters as cover for a kind
of commercial nihilism....They suffocate vigorous discourse, the
oxygen of a system such as ours, by identifying those who refuse to
conform and encouraging a kind of e-mail or telephonic jihad which
is happily carried out by well-funded organizations operating under
the guise of promoting fair press coverage....What is so unsettling
about the current climate is the ruthless efficiency of the attacks
on those who refuse to conform.”— NBC’s Tom Brokaw in a November 19, 2003 speech at a National
Press Club dinner where he was given the 2003 Fourth Estate Award at
an event shown live on C-SPAN.

“It’s admirable for reporters to be skeptical, provided they’re not
cynical. But I’m not any more skeptical about Republican
administrations than I am about Democratic administrations.”— Peter Jennings, as quoted by St. Petersburg Times television
critic Eric Deggans in a November 18, 2003 story.

“Discussion about liberal bias has gotten altogether skewed and
altogether out of proportion. There were legitimate complaints by
the right a few years ago, but now the pendulum has swung wildly to
the other side in terms of radio and talk shows on television.” — Ex-CNN reporter Frank Sesno, quoted by the American Journalism
Review’s Rachel Smolkin in “Are the News Media Soft on Bush?”
October/November 2003.

“I think the press was muzzled, and I think the press self-muzzled.
I’m sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a
certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and
its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of
fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of
broadcast work we did....The entire body politic...did not ask
enough questions, for instance, about weapons of mass destruction. I
mean, it looks like this was disinformation at the highest levels.”— CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on CNBC’s Topic A with Tina Brown,
September 10, 2003.

“I don’t think anybody who looks carefully at us thinks that we are
a left-wing or a right-wing organization.”— Peter Jennings, as quoted by USA Today’s Peter Johnson in a
September 9, 2003 article on Jennings’ 20 years as sole anchor of
ABC’s World News Tonight.

“I think that we’ve gotten it mostly right on the big and the
complex issues of our time. And in fairness to my competitors — and
Peter just celebrated his 20th anniversary — I think you could say
the same thing about Peter Jennings and Dan Rather as well. These
three aging white guys have been at this for a while now, and for
the most part I think that we’ve served this country very well.”— Tom Brokaw on CNBC’s Capital Report September 5, 2003, his 20th
anniversary as anchor of NBC Nightly News.

“I’m not going to judge anybody else in the business, but our work —
I can speak for NBC News and our newsroom — it goes through, talk
about checks and balances. We have an inordinate number of editors.
Every word I write, before it goes on air, goes through all kinds of
traps and filters, and it’s read by all kinds of different people
who point out bias.”— CNBC anchor Brian Williams on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show,
July 29, 2003.

“Our greatest accomplishment as a profession is the development
since World War II of a news reporting craft that is truly
non-partisan, and non-ideological, and that strives to be
independent of undue commercial or governmental influence....It is
that legacy we must protect with our diligent stewardship. To do so
means we must be aware of the energetic effort that is now underway
to convince our readers that we are ideologues. It is an exercise
of, in disinformation, of alarming proportions. This attempt to
convince the audience of the world’s most ideology-free newspapers
that they’re being subjected to agenda-driven news reflecting a
liberal bias. I don’t believe our viewers and readers will be, in
the long-run, misled by those who advocate biased journalism.”— New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines accepting the
“George Beveridge Editor of the Year Award” at a National Press
Foundation dinner shown live on C-SPAN2 February 20, 2003.

CBS’s Lesley Stahl: “Today you have broadcast journalists who are
avowedly conservative....The voices that are being heard in
broadcast media today, are far more — the ones who are being heard —
are far more likely to be on the right and avowedly so, and
therefore, more — almost stridently so, than what you’re talking
about.”
Host Cal Thomas: “Can you name a conservative journalist at CBS
News?”
Stahl: “I don’t know of anybody’s political bias at CBS News....We
try very hard to get any opinion that we have out of our stories,
and most of our stories are balanced.”— Exchange on Fox News Channel’s After Hours with Cal Thomas,
January 18, 2003.

“It took conservatives a lot of hard and steady work to push the
media rightward. It dishonors that work to continue to presume that
— except for a few liberal columnists — there is any such thing as
the big liberal media. The media world now includes (1) talk radio,
(2) cable television and (3) the traditional news sources
(newspapers, newsmagazines and the old broadcast networks). Two of
these three major institutions tilt well to the right, and the third
is under constant pressure to avoid even the pale hint of
liberalism....What it adds up to is a media heavily biased toward
conservative politics and conservative politicians.”— Former Washington Post and New York Times reporter E.J. Dionne
in a December 6, 2002 Washington Post op-ed.

“I don’t think it’s a liberal agenda. It happens that journalism
will always be spending more time on issues that seem to be liberal
to some people: the problem of the downtrodden, the problem of civil
rights and human rights, the problem of those people who don’t have
a place at the table with the powerful.”– NBC anchor Tom Brokaw on MSNBC’s Donahue when asked about the
claim of liberal media bias, July 25, 2002.

“I have yet to see a body of evidence that suggests the reporting
that gets on the air reflects any political bias.” — Former CNN and CBS reporter, now Executive Director of NewsLab,
Deborah Potter as reported in “Leaning on the Media” by Mark
Jurkowitz, The Boston Globe, January 17, 2002.

“Searching for the unbiased human being is an impossible task...What
makes journalists skilled is that they know how to be fair.” — Former CNN President Rick Kaplan as reported in “Leaning on the
Media” by Mark Jurkowitz, The Boston Globe, January 17, 2002.

“The idea that we would set out, consciously or unconsciously, to
put some kind of an ideological framework over what we’re doing is
nonsense.” — NBC’s Tom Brokaw, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, May 24, 2001.

“I think the tag, you know, somehow or another, ‘he’s a
bomb-throwing Bolshevik from the left side’ that’s attached to me,
is put there by people who, they subscribe to the idea either you
report the news the way we want you to report it, or we’re gonna tag
some, what we think negative sign on you.” — CBS’s Dan Rather, CNBC’s Rivera Live, May 21, 2001.

“I think there is a mainstream media. CNN is mainstream media, and
the main, ABC, CBS, NBC are mainstream media. And I think it’s just
essentially to make the point that we are largely in the center
without particular axes to grind, without ideologies which are
represented in our daily coverage, at least certainly not on
purpose.” — ABC’s Peter Jennings, CNN’s Larry King Live, May 15, 2001.

“I’m not liberal. First of all, I finally decided to get rid of
those two words, ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative.’ I don’t know what
they mean anymore. I mean, I’ve come down to ‘sense’ and ‘nonsense.’
It makes sense to me, it’s got nothing to do with conservative or
liberal, it makes sense to me that hunters be allowed to have
rifles. It makes no sense to me that there are 200 million handguns
in American cities. I have always believed that if you get the NRA
out of the way, decent reasonable Americans would figure out a way
to respect the Second Amendment and get guns out of the hands of
people who shouldn’t have them.”— Don Hewitt, Executive Producer of CBS’s 60 Minutes, on CNN’s
Larry King Live, April 11, 2001.

Bill Press: “Why is it that you are the epitome of the left-wing
liberal media in the mind of every conservative I’ve ever talked to?
What did you do to get that reputation?”
Dan Rather: “I remained an independent reporter who would not report
the news the way they wanted it or – from the left or the right. I’m
a lifetime reporter. All I ever dreamed of was being a journalist,
and the definition of journalist to me was the guy who’s an honest
broker of information....I do subscribe to the idea of: ‘Play no
favorites and pull no punches.’” — Exchange on CNN’s Crossfire, June 24, 1999.

“I think we can now safely conclude that this whole notion that the
liberal media elite is coddling Bill Clinton and always plays to the
Democrats is absurd. I mean the fact is who’s been the undoing of
Bill Clinton: Newsweek and the Washington Post, those raging
conservative publications.” — Former New York Times and U.S. News reporter Steve Roberts on
Lewinsky scandal coverage, CNN’s Late Edition, February 1, 1998.

“Scholar after scholar has disputed, in studying the actual content
of the press, what you’ve just blithely handed out that it’s this
left-wing media. That’s a charge from the ’50s. That’s not the
current press....the bias is a bias against politicians of all
kinds, not a bias for one side or other.” — Ellen Hume, Director of the PBS Democracy Project, reacting to
Bob Novak’s assertion the mainstream media are “tilted to the left.”
July 27, 1997 CNN’s Reliable Sources.

“I don’t think voting for Clinton makes you a liberal. I mean, Bill
Clinton isn’t even a liberal, and second, if you’re liberal, does
that mean you can’t be fair? What hypocrisy that we sit around and
talk about the press like it’s some sort of ‘they.’ It’s us. Are we
too liberal? N-O.” — Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift on The McLaughlin Group, July 5, 1997.

“There is no convincing evidence that journalists infect their
stories — intentionally or otherwise — with their own political
prejudices....While a few studies suggest such a link, most are the
handiwork of right-leaning groups and critics whose research methods
can’t withstand scrutiny....The credibility of the media is not
suffering because of a liberal bias; it’s suffering, in large part,
because of the continuing charge of bias that has gone unanswered
for too long.” — Everette Dennis, Senior VP of the Freedom Forum, in the
January-February 1997 edition of ASNE’s magazine, The American
Editor.

“I was about to say that if you want to talk about bias, go ask
President Clinton where the bias lies. As you know, the White House
just issued this big huge study, they called it, of how the mainline
media is sucked in by the right-wing conspiratorialists. My point is
that everybody who watches television brings their own biases to it,
and if what you’re watching doesn’t please you, then you think we’re
biased. Everybody dislikes the messenger. Everybody complains about
us, right wing, left wing, Democrats, Republicans. They all pound on
us. They all think we’re unfair to them if we’re telling them things
they don’t want to hear. And we do the best we can. We try to be
fair.” — CBS 60 Minutes reporter Lesley Stahl on C-SPAN’s Washington
Journal, January 31, 1997.

“I think the fact that we’re still standing, this day, 35 years
after we...entered this business, is some, immodestly, some small
tribute the fact that we’ve worked very hard to drain the bias out
of what we do.” — NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw at the National Press Club, June 11,
1996.

“I’m all news, all the time. Full power, tall tower. I want to break
in when news breaks out. That’s my agenda. Now respectfully, when
you start talking about a liberal agenda and all the, quote, liberal
bias in the media, I quite frankly, and I say this respectfully but
candidly to you, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now if you
want to talk about an issue, what do I believe as a citizen of the
United States of America, I can tell you what I believe in. I
believe in a strong defense, clean water, and tight money. Now
whatever that makes me politically, that’s what I am. What I don’t
like, and if you want to see my neck swell or the hair begin to rise
on the back of my neck, is to be tagged by someone else’s label. I
try really hard not to do that with other people, particularly
people who are in public service and politics.” — Dan Rather to talk radio host Mike Rosen of KOA in Denver,
November 28, 1995.

“I don’t think the coverage of Gingrich and the GOP Congress has
been liberally biased...” — ABC’s Cokie Roberts on CNBC’s Meet the Media, October 23, 1995.

Larry King: “Over all these fifteen years, how do you react to the
constant, especially, far right-wing criticism that the news on CBS
is mainstream biased?”
Dan Rather: “....Well, my answer to that is basically a good Texas
phrase, which is bullfeathers....I think the fact that if someone
survives for four or five years at or near the top in network
television, you can just about bet they are pretty good at keeping
independence in their reporting. What happens is a lot of people
don’t want independence. They want the news reported the way they
want it for their own special political agendas or ideological
reasons.” — CNN’s Larry King Live, March 11, 1995.

“It’s one of the great political myths, about press bias. Most
reporters are interested in a story. Most reporters don’t know
whether they’re Republican or Democrat, and vote every which way.
Now, a lot of politicians would like you to believe otherwise, but
that’s the truth of the matter. I’ve worked around journalism all of
my life, Tom Snyder has as well, and I think he’ll agree with this,
that most reporters, when you get to know them, would fall in the
general category of kind of common-sense moderates. And also, let me
say that I don’t think that ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ means very
much any more, except to those kind of inside-the-Beltway people who
want to use it for their own partisan political advantage. I don’t
think it holds up.” — Dan Rather answering a caller’s question about liberal bias on
CBS’s Late Late Show with Tom Snyder, February 8, 1995.

Question: “I don’t think it’s your personal liberal bias
that’s well-known, but the liberal bias of your network is obvious.”ABC News anchor Carole Simpson: “I challenge you to give me
examples of that. I disagree wholeheartedly. I think it’s again, an
example of the mean-spiritedness that is these days also directed at
the media.” — January 5, 1995 AOL auditorium session.

“A liberal bias? I don’t know what a liberal bias is. Do you mean we
care about the poor, the sick, and the maimed? Do we care whether
people are being shot every day on the streets of America? If that’s
liberal, so be it. I think it’s everything that’s good in life —
that we do care. And also for the solutions — we seek solutions and
we do think that we are all responsible for what happens in this
country.” — UPI White House correspondent Helen Thomas on C-SPAN’s Journalists’ Roundtable, December 31, 1993.

“I think there are reporters around Clinton who are baby boomers who
are drawn to him. I think there are a lot of reporters in Washington
who just wish for a new story. But I watch probably as many talk
shows, and as many interview shows, what George Bush calls the
professional talking heads on Sundays, as anybody else. I actually
think the bias, in the overall system, is from the center to the
right.” — PBS’s Bill Moyers on CNN’s Larry King Live, November 2, 1992.

“I don’t think there is [a bias] at all. I think anyone who accuses
the press of bias is acting in desperation, I think. I think the
press has been much more aggressive and fair, in being, in going
after both sides, and looking, than ever before.” — New York Times reporter Richard Berke on CNN’s Larry King Live,
October 16, 1992.

“My reaction to that button [‘Rather Biased’] and others, in part,
is a button I bought yesterday that says `Yeah, I’m In The Media,
Screw You!’....I do understand why a lot of people are upset with
us, why we rank somewhere between terrorists and bank robbers on the
approval scale. We do criticize. That’s part of our role. Our role
is not just to parrot what people say, it’s to make people think. I
think that sometimes I want to say to the electorate ‘Grow up!’” — Newsweek reporter Ginny Carroll on C-SPAN’s Journalists’
Roundtable, August 21, 1992.